“Self-defense can be an important crime deterrent,” concluded a study by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) mandated via executive order by President Barack Obama. The findings also question the effectiveness of gun-control measures.

The $10 million study was commissioned by President Barack Obama as part of 23 executive orders he signed in January of 2013.

The study’s findings include:

Gun-use is the safest of studied “self-protective strategies,”

Suicide accounts for most firearm deaths,

Felons who use guns very seldom obtain their guns by stealing them, and

There is no evidence that gun restrictions reduce gun violence.

“Studies that directly assessed the effect of actual defensive uses of guns (i.e., incidents in which a gun was ‘used’ by the crime victim in the sense of attacking or threatening an offender) have found consistently lower injury rates among gun-using crime victims compared with victims who used other self-protective strategies,” the CDC study, entitled “Priorities For Research to Reduce the Threat of Firearm-Related Violence,” states.

Researchers also found that the majority of firearm deaths are from suicide, not homicide. “Between the years 2000 and 2010, firearm-related suicides significantly outnumbered homicides for all age groups, annually accounting for 61 percent of the more than 335,600 people who died from firearm-related violence in the United States."

“Most felons report obtaining the majority of their firearms from informal sources,” adds the report, while “stolen guns account for only a small percentage of guns used by convicted criminals.”

The report expresses uncertainty about gun control measures, stating that “whether gun restrictions reduce firearm-related violence is an unresolved issue,” and that there is no evidence “that passage of right-to-carry laws decrease or increase violence crime.” It also stated that proposed “gun turn-in programs are ineffective.”

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